We Blow It As Parents

Graphics Magician, our thirteen-year old son, doesn't read this blog, and neither do any of his friends.  So unless any of you tell him about this post, he'll likely never know about it.  So, you know, please don't.

But we're in for a very challenging adolescence with him.  The girls were challenging in their own ways, but not like this.  (We knew a large family in Richmond, and the mother said it was like having six "first children."  What worked with one was completely inapplicable to another.)

We let him hang out with some friends at a local shopping area.  GM said he thought one of the friend's moms was going to be there.  She wasn't.  Then he said he thought said mom was going to pick them up and bring them home after awhile.  That "after awhile" turned out to be several unsupervised hours. THEN he wasn't answering his phone or texts because he'd shut his phone off because he was running low on battery power because he'd used it all up playing games and texting with friends.

Adored Wife and I had kind of a frantic hour there, because we had no idea who was supervising him or when he was coming home and we couldn't get in touch with him.  I wound up going to get him.

This wasn't his fault, because he didn't tell us any untruths, and the phone thing did look logical from his point of view.  He turned it on every hour or so to check for messages.  And it certainly wasn't the fault of the friend's mom, who hadn't promised us anything.  This was our fault, for giving him more freedom than he was ready to handle.  They behaved, they survived, they didn't get in trouble (that we know of), but still.

We wish he'd handled it differently, and if he'd been more mature he would have.  But the whole problem is that he wasn't mature enough to be given that kind of freedom.

Plain and simple, we blew it, and have no one but ourselves to blame.

He had fun, and he's a little bewildered at how freaked out we were.  But he's not old enough to properly appreciate all the things that could have happened.

So, we're going to have to tighten up the boundaries, which won't be much fun.  We shouldn't have let them get that loose in the first place.  Our fault.  We expect some resistance.

We crave prayers for wisdom, friends,  This one's going to be challenging.

Thanks and God bless.